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Deep Work By Cal Newport – Book Summary

Hey, guys this week I have come with a book summary of “deep work– rules for focused success in a distracted world” written by Cal Newport. This book is about the science of productivity, techniques to live distraction-free life. This book is divided into two parts, the first part is to convince you how deep work is essential and the second part is about rules to learn this skill. So, let’s start.

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deep work book summary

Did you ever noticed that after wake up you turn on internet data and check tons of notifications from Facebook, WhatsApp, e-mail, dailyhunt etc. Most of the time these notifications contain information that beyond your control or not related to your goal and end up doing nothing meaningful and distract your mind.

Nowadays many workers of companies and organisations spend their time replying e-mails and attending meetings, they switch tasks often by decreasing their attention. This kind of shallow work does not create any value by wasting time and energy. Deep work will help you to overcome this situation.

What is Deep Work?

Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate. Deep work helps to increase the limits of brain, builds higher concentration.

Opposite to deep work is shallow work. It is the work that done with distracted mind, its easy to replicate and this type of work does not create any value. Examples of this type of work are checking e-mails while study, scrolling instagram, facebook.

Why deep work is necessary?

According to a study, when you switch from task A to task B, your attention does not immediately follow – a residue of your attention remains stuck thinking about previous task and you can’t focus on current task.This is the main reason why deep work is neccesary.

When you focus your attention on single important task for hours, you end up being productive and achieving things that you can’t imagine. Deep work will help you to learn hard skills and produce results at an elite level, which makes you valuable in this competitive world.

Deep work is meaningful

There is strong relation between deep work and meaningful life. When your mind consistantly remain in focused state of mind so intense that there is no attention left over to think about anything irrelevant, or to worry about problems.

When you lose yourself in an activity and stretch your mind to its ultimate level generates happiness. Opposite to this when your switch from checking e-mails to study to another task frequently creates frustration and unhappiness. Now, hope you got the idea that deep work is essential. So, lets move to next part of this book.

The Rules

Rule 1: Work Deeply

Implementing deep work is not as easy as we think because we are addicted to distractions. So there is a need to create routin and rituals. Following are four routins, choose one of them and implement in your life.

The Monastic Philosophy Of Deep Work Scheduling

This type of philosophy is about completely disconnecting yourself from the world. Some writers, researchers use this kind of routine and produce awesome work.

The Bimodal Philosophy Of Deep Work Scheduling

This type of scheduling is about dividing your time between deep work and shallow work. You might work four days of week in deep mode and rest of time living normal. On year basic you might give spend season working deeply and rest of living normal.

The Rhythmic Philosophy Of Deep Work Scheduling

As name indicates this philosophy is about creating rhythm. Create a habit of deep work on daily basis for two hours or like that. Put your whole energy into that task.

The Journalistic Philosophy Of Deep Work Scheduling

Any time when you can find free time, go into deep work mode. Journalist use this kind of philosophy. This is about shifting yourself from shallow work to deep work at required moment.

Rule 2: Embrace Boredom

When you feel bore or if you having nothing work to do, don’t went immediately on smartphone for checking inbox, Instead embace boredom. Don’t distract yourself at slightest hint of boredom. To develop intense concentration you need to take care of your concentration out of deep work sessions also.

Rule 3: Quit Social Media

Social media is one of the measure source of distraction and thus shallow work. Social media and deep work don’t go together. It gives short term benefits but destroying concentration.

Rule 4: Drain the Shallows

Drain the shallows from your life. schedule your shallow work and spend very little time on replying e-mails, checking whatsapp messages. Say yes to wildly important tasks only.

With this, we come to end of book summary “deep work – rules for focused success in a distracted world” written by Cal Newport. Hope you like it and share it with your friends. Keep reading and deep working.